Top Facebook Status Trend in 2010 Surprises Many

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News of natural disasters, the World Cup and popular movies were
among the top Facebook status updates in 2010, but the number one
trend from this past year has many older users scratching their
heads.

According to Facebook's second Memology study which looked at
what terms spawned the most in status
updates compared to the year before, members worldwide urged
their friends and family members to "HMU," which stands for hit
me up.

Whether used when looking for something to do or just getting off
work, the acronym was barely used last year but grew suddenly and
steadily throughout 2010, especially during summer breaks and
weekends, according to Lars Backstorm, a data scientist for
Facebook.

"By May, however, it started to grow slowly and was averaging
about 20 posts a day," Backstorm wrote via a blog on Facebook.
"The volume roughly doubled every month, and by the end of 2009
it had risen to 1,600 posts a day—too modest of a number to be on
our radar for last year's list."

HMU continued to grow aggressively throughout 2010, increasing by
about 75 percent each month. By the end of summer, HMU reached
80,000 mentions per day.

The second most discussed topic on
Facebook statuses this year was the World Cup. The start of
the games and the finals garnered the most attention, with 1.5
million and 1.3 million mentions, respectively, of "World Cup"
and countless more mentions of teams and players.

"At key moments over the course of the games, as many as 50
percent of all status updates were related to them," Backstorm
noted.

Movies were also a popular talk of conversation in 2010. "Toy
Story 3," "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," "Inception," "Alice in
Wonderland" and " Iron
Man 2 " were the five most discussed.

The
iPad and
iPhone 4 accounted for over 25 million posts this year,
making it the fourth most buzzed about status update trend.

The Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti also hit Facebook. In fact,
within one minute of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake's strike,
status updates started rolling in, Backstorm said.

"With the infrastructure in
Haiti badly damaged, many of the first reports were from
people in the nearby Dominican Republic (where earthquake is
"terremoto"), who felt the powerful quake at a distance,"
Backstorm said. "Firsthand reports peaked four minutes after the
quake hit, at a rate of 120 a minute. It took another couple of
hours for the world to learn of the disaster, and a day later
people on Facebook were discussing it at a peak rate of 1,800
posts per minute."

Other popular mentions included Justin Bieber (No. 6); games on
Facebook, such as FarmVille (No. 7), Mineros/Miners (No. 8);
Airplanes – not only for travel reasons, but thanks to the
popular song "Airplanes" by B.o.B.; and, of course, mentions of
2011.

"References to 2011 showed a big spike on Jan. 1, 2010, as people
took the new year as an opportunity to look ahead another full
year," Backstorm said. "As the date approaches, mentions have
steadily increased, as people make more and more plans for the
coming year."